In final cabinet meeting before elections, Netanyahu says he told visiting US senators: "History will not forgive those who allow Iran to arm itself with nuclear weapons."

The problem in the Middle East is not building more homes in a settlement like
Ariel, but rather Iran, Syria, and the rising tide of Islamic extremism, Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said at Sunday’s cabinet meeting, the last before
Tuesday’s elections.

Netanyahu opened up the meeting – which did not deal
with any burning diplomatic or political issues, but rather with a Keren
Kayemeth LeIsrael- Jewish National Fund briefing before Tu Bishvat, a Justice
Ministry briefing on its projects and operations over the last four years and an
Education Ministry briefing on school registration zones – by discussing a
meeting he held Saturday night with a bipartisan delegation of US senators led
by John McCain (R-Arizona).

“I told them that the problem is not building
in Ariel and it is not building in Jerusalem,” he said.

“The problem in
the Middle East is Iran’s attempt to build nuclear weapons, and the chemical
weapons in Syria and the Islamic extremism that is spreading in Africa and
threatening to inundate the entire region.

I told them that history will
not forgive those who allow Iran to arm itself with nuclear weapons. This was,
and remains, the main mission facing not only myself and the State of Israel,
but the US as well.”

The Senate delegation, which also included Kelly
Ayotte (R-New Hampshire), Richard Blumenthal (DConnecticut), Sheldon Whitehouse
(D-Rhode Island) and Chris Coons (DDelaware), arrived after visiting Egypt, and
said they raised with Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi his taped anti-Semitic
tirade in which he called Jews the descendants of apes and pigs, and said that
all of Israel is Palestine.

At the outset of the cabinet meeting,
Netanyahu – who during the current election campaign, has touted the
construction of the 230-km. long border fence with Egypt in the South as one of
his government’s main achievements – said that on Saturday he was told that
“seven infiltrators” reached the fence in December, and none of them made their
way to Israel’s cities. “This is one of the most important things we have done
in order to safeguard the State of Israel,” he said.